


time does not bring relief

by powerfulsound



Series: whisper song [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 15:36:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16140263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerfulsound/pseuds/powerfulsound
Summary: Bruce finds out.





	time does not bring relief

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for PTSD and mild self-harm. Please take note and put yourself first.

The bitterest lesson, Jason had confessed once, that he had to learn was change. Nothing remains constant. 

 

Nothing stays the same. 

Bruce used to be his greatest supporter, his shelter, the rock he could lean on. 

When the world moved around them in terrible cruel ways, Bruce hid him, behind that solid back of his, sheltered him with the reassuring bulk of his large body and the heavy comforting weight of his cape. 

Stood between him and the world, with that formidable will. 

Before, Jason was the strength for Catherine. 

With Bruce, Bruce had let him be a child. A child soldier in his war of crime, but a child nonetheless. With homework and projects, and the strong arms with which he would envelop Jason with. There had been something comforting in it, the sort of protection Alfred couldn’t offer for all his sweet ways.

Now, it’s a world that stands between them. A yawning abyss, and every step forward into the dark. A broken helmet. A fired gun. 

The saddest part - the part that gets Tim aching and heart sick is how they still love each other. They would die for each other. 

They just no longer recognise each other.

But this, Timothy knows. For all that they are special to Bruce, Jason will always be his first son. Once, in a challenge to himself, Timothy had hacked encrypted files, carefully, recklessly with the heady rush of his own cleverness. 

He threw up soon after. 

He remembers lying in bed, the nausea wrestling with his empty stomach as he recalled -

_the delighted grin on Jason’s face as he threw his hands up in the air and Bruce’s indulgent smile as he piggy backed Jason around the room-_

This is what Bruce lost.

This is what Jason lost.

But still, they move on. 

There’s no point in standing still.

* * *

_what does it mean-_

_Jason, talk to me, Jay-_

_what does it mean when Bruce would love-_

_he doesn’t not like that-_

_what does it mean when Bruce would love that man more than-_

_don’t think like that-_

_what does it mean when Bruce would love that clown more than he ever loved me-_

_Jason-_

_Does it mean that Bruce never loved me-_

* * *

Tim’s a deep sleeper when he finally allows himself to sleep. But the moment Jason jerks awake with a sharp gasp, he knows instinctively that something is wrong.

“I can hear him.” Jason says, with a distant gaze. With measured actions, Tim flips the switches to flood the room with light. Tim knows to tread carefully when he’s this way. To avoid touching, when his eyes are greener than the usual gray-blue. His voice is dreamy, and Tim resists to check his pulse, where he knows it’ll be sluggish and slow from the medication. “His laughter.”

“Jason.”

“There is always laughter.” Jason continues, but there’s a slight edge to his voice. Tim feels the hair at the back of his neck rise, a fight or flight response being triggered. He tamps down on it. “The sharp bay of hyenas, and it crawls under my skin. Scarabs within decayed flesh. I rot, inside out. Dirt beneath my nails, and I breathe in soil, rich and fecund- ”

“Hey-“

“All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre.” His voice turns hard, and his fingers curl around the trigger of an invisible gun. “Your god is a masked death-”

“Can you follow my voice Jason?” Reveal no fear, because Jason’s a bloodhound to any weakness, seeking them out unerringly. “Come back to me. You are safe here. This is our bedroom. The date is-”

“Timothy, Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne-“ Jason’s voice turns cold, harsh with a sort of discordant melody. “Beloved ward of Bruce Wayne, darling replacement son, little bird with fragile wings-“ He turns to look at Tim with unseeing eyes, an ugly sneer to his plush mouth.

Tim wets his lips, nervous but determined. 

“Jason, do you hear the city? Hear her breathe around you. The roar of the cars outside, the loud heartbeat pulsing, a thrum of activity. We are together, and you are safe.”

“Tim.” Jason exhales, and the green recedes. Revealing only bloodshot grey eyes, bags underneath them. Jason is not even thirty, but he looks so tired and so drained. He drops his head between his legs and breathes out. “Fuck. How bad was it?”

“Barely ten minutes.” Tim dares a touch to the back of Jason’s hand where it rests on his knee. Jason turns it over, gripping him. Tight enough the small bones threaten to shift. Jason brings his hand to his mouth, and kisses the tip of his fingers. 

“Thank you.”  

Tim smiles, recognising the effort it took Jason to thank him instead of apologising. He returns the kiss to Jason’s own fingers, earning himself a flash of a tired grin. “Do you think you can get some sleep?”

“Maybe if you sing me a lullaby in that monotone of yours.” Jason teases, but he lies down, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Tim, just because he can, strokes a hand down Jason’s back, and at his touch, the tension leaks out. 

“Feels good.” Jason slurs, and there’s just that bit of wickedness to his mouth. “I changed my mind, maybe if you let me suck you off-“

“Go to sleep, Jason.” Tim slaps a hand against his chest in feigned annoyance. Jason laughs, but his eyes are bright from underneath lowered lids, just watching Tim. 

Tim leans over, and presses his mouth to the lovely lines of Jason’s lower lip. Tugs on it with his teeth, and feels rather than sees Jason go plaint under him. He gives it a lick. “Later, when I’ve had coffee. Take a nap first.”

“Pinky promise.” Jason curls onto his side, and it’s so easy, so natural that Tim fits behind him, scattering absent minded kisses along the sinew of his shoulder, an arm slung over his side to hold him close. He waits, till Jason’s breathing has evened out, until his belly rises and falls beneath his hand before he eases away.

He closes the door behind him. Walks in the quiet way Cass tried to teach him, and he succeeds because the silence in the house goes uninterrupted. 

He will not allow their sanctuary to be intruded on.

So, Tim walks down the stairs to the living room. Combs his hand through his hair. He refuses to cheapen either him or Jason by pulling on a persona, so both Timothy Drake Wayne and Red Robin are left behind, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t have coffee for this confrontation. He sets out two cups and runs that beast of a coffeemaker, Jason’s gift to him and once he thinks he can keep his cool, opens the door.

Jason must have been exhausted, if he hadn’t reacted to the lighting up of Tim’s phone or at the sound of the door opening. Floor to window ceilings serve a purpose after all, if only to stop his siblings from crashing though under the guise of visiting. He had chosen this building not just for the unparalleled view but for the fact there are no nearby buildings providing a decent grappling point.

So it’s Bruce then, even if it was Batman’s assessing gaze, observing them both, as though cataloguing a potential threat. The tight line of his jaw reminds Tim of Damian and Jason.

“A year.” Bruce says, but it sounds like an accusation rather than a statement.

Tim breathes in, counting to ten before breathing out. This too is a tell, but it is not shame, nor resignation. 

It is him keeping his temper back.

“And six months.” He replies. “What is your purpose here Bruce?” Tim holds his hands out, and until now he still feels the phantom touch of Jason’s grip around his knuckles. 

“A game.” Bruce says, controlled, but Tim has been his partner to recognise the anger beneath it. “It is a dangerous game you are playing Tim.”

“It is not a game.” Timothy doesn’t offer any more than that. His coffee is beginning to cool. 

“You hurt him.” Ah, so Bruce is here as a father. Tim’s smile is a brittle thing.

“With his permission.”

“He is not in his right mind, for both of you to be playing this sadomasochistic game. It’s ropes today, flogging tomorrow and what will it be the next month as both of you escalate? Nine o tails? Or russian roulette, with a gun to your-“

It comes as a surprise, to both, when Tim’s mug shatters in his hand. 

What a pity it is too, because he loved that mug. Jason chose it for him, pressing a kiss to the back of Tim’s neck as Tim complained that Star Trek and Star Wars were hardly interchangeable. Darth Vader glowers at him, his face split in half.

“Get out.” Tim says softly. His blood roars in his ears. Deafening. 

Tim is so very furious, that he struggles to think past the hurt and the sheer rage that seethes in his lower belly. Irrationally, a stray thought floats inside. This must be what Jason feels like with pit madness. Except his anger is white hot gone cold, and his words are enunciated in the crisp accent of his neglected years. 

He sounds just like dear departed Janet. 

“Tim-“

“How dare you,” Tim continues, keeping his hand around a shard because the alternative would be splashing the other cup of coffee in his face. “ _How dare you, Bruce._ Do not presume to know him, if you think Jason would hold a gun to my head for a game. Do not presume to know anything.”

The provocation had been deliberate. It doesn’t make him hurt any less for Jason.

Bruce remains quiet but does nothing. His ice blue eyes are cool, but Tim knows better, knows how to read the pain along the sad lines of his mouth. It satisfies a small part of him. Fucker.

“You will get out.” When the rhythmic dripping of coffee tapers off, Tim feels his temper finally comes under control, has swallowed all the cutting remarks that he has like razorblades. Selina can keep Bruce’s handsome face. “And when Jason wakes up, you will apologise. Not just because he is the man I love, and the man I chose, but because he is your son.”

“We are not here to suffer your judgement. We are not here to be condemned, to be told to leave each other alone. I am not here at your sufferance or his. I am here, because this is where I want to be.”

“He will hurt you.” Bruce says, after a long while. “There is too much between both of you.”

He knows what Bruce means. Bruce had left that long savage scar alongside Jason’s throat, and it seems they will never leave that moment. Doomed to stay in that confrontation. To repeat it, over and over for all eternity.

“I understand who he is,” Tim replies, evenly. He brings his hand to the soft material of Jason’s repurposed shirt, resting it above a mark he once hated. There had been an entire night Jason spent with his sinful mouth on it, Tim’s hands tugging at his hair, legs tight until Jason had laughed - 

_ease up Timmy you’re suffocating m_ e - 

“I have always wanted him to be himself. It is you who demands him to be someone different. It is you that hurts him.”

He lets Bruce looks. 

The opened cereal box in the kitchen, the expensive cat kibble resting against the shoe rack, neatly sealed. There’s a pair of ballerina flats hung up along the balcony, resting against an eye searing purple overcoat.  Different teas are displayed proudly on the kitchen table, their names handwritten in an elegant script.

“They all know.”

Tim nods.

Bruce’s jaw tightens further. His breathing is too even, too controlled to be anything but one of his own exercises. Tim’s own is harsh to his own ears.

“I-“ Bruce starts, and stops. Word by word, tugged out from his chest, as fresh as any bullet wound. His voice is empty. “When Jas-. When Robin died.” He pauses.

Tim cannot breathe. The grief that he can read from Bruce is palpable, a presence in the room. A beloved sceptre of Bruce’s sorrow, that clings and chokes in its opressiveness. 

To Bruce it might as well have happened yesterday.

“His smile.” Bruce says, after a long moment of silence. His voice doesn’t shake, but he sounds old. “I don’t remember his-”

Tim is weak against Bruce. Not Batman, and not Bruce Wayne, but Bruce. He’s exhausted of the fights. Of the screaming and the yelling and the stubborn way the people he loves have dashed themselves in futile hope for change against the rocks of past tragedies. 

 

“Jason feeds the stray cats with Damian,” Tim says. Bruce’s gaze slashes towards him, his eyes uncharacteristically round. “They’re trying to change my mind about pets. I think it’s only a matter of time before I find Jason bedraggled with puppy eyes and a sad lump of fur, and Damian willing to defend them to the death. Cass practices her ballet there,” Tim gestures towards the clear space before the windows. “She likes the morning light. Steph likes to watch, but she gets cold easily. Jason is the one who installed the mirror, and bought Steph the coat.”

 

“The cereal is for Dick. But he’s only allowed what Jason pours out, because when he gets into a sugar high, there’s blood and tears involved. Alfred comes over for tea, and Jason is the only one with the patience to brew them the way Alfred prefers.”

 

Bruce smiles at that, a small curl to his mouth, genuine and half a grimace. “He’s always had a weird sense of patience.”

 

This is private, but Tim soldiers on.

 

“I built the bookshelves for Jason for his birthday but he was the one who finished them. He cooks more than any of us do, and he only allows Damian to help him. We don’t buy bread often, but when we do, he likes to buy an entire basket full. He never lets me toss away stale bre-“

 

“It’s his food issues.” Bruce says, hurt and soft.

 

Tim laughs shakily. “And he uses them for french toast and bread pudding.” He wants Jason, wants to curl around him and hear him breathe, alive and here. “Your son is right in front of you, if only if you stop looking back.”

 

There’s no point in standing still.

 

He shrugs. 

 

“Let yourself out Bruce. I need to clean up here.” Tim turns his back on Bruce, rummaging though the drawers for a dishcloth. 

 

He hears the beep. 

 

Tim closes his eyes, and breathes out. He tries to ground himself with the texture of the cloth underneath his fingers, the bite of broken glass but all he feels is the echoing grief, the hollowed taste of sorrow and -

 

His mind clears. There’s a sound from upstairs, courtesy given to him and to ensure he doesn’t startle-

 

Jason’s awake. 

 

Tim must have made some sort of noise, shown something on his face as he turned around because Jason’s vaulting down the staircase with a worried look, naked and uncaring like some kind of Greek God and Tim loves him. “Hey hey, Timbo, what’s going on -“

 

Tim just loves him. 

 

“Jason.” He’s shaking, because all the adrenaline has been drained out of him, and because he wants to feel Jason’s warmth. He backs Jason to the table, and his hands slip on the coffee and he’s getting Jason all wet and he needs-

 

He needs-

 

“Hey, I got you.” Jason smooths his hands up and down Tim’s back. “I got you.” He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t shift to get away, only holds Tim up and takes his weight. The rise and fall under Tim’s cheek grounds him.

 

“I wish the world could be better to you.” Tim mumbles against him. It probably sounds like gibberish.

 

Jason’s heart is wondrously loud. 

 

“Didn’t catch that, pretty boy.” Despite his obvious fatigue, Jason gives Tim a smile as he holds Tim’s face with a hand, and examines him closely. He curls the other one around Tim’s and pries his fingers open, revealing thin bloodied lines where the shard has dug in. “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”

 

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.” Tim says, instead. His heart is already slowing down, his breathing evening out and his exhaustion setting in.  “Just... Just give me this.

 

“Okay,” Jason says. “Okay.” He kisses Tim’s forehead. “I got you.” He repeats again.

 

“I know,” Tim replies, and leans back into Jason’s warmth, lets himself be cradled close. “I got you too.”

 

He cannot be the world to Jason, nor can he begin to fix the wrongs the world dealt to him but against infinite possibilities and odds, they have found each other and maybe-

 

Just maybe, that will be enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is an outtake from cordite, where one of my friends asked me how Bruce would react to finding out, and I was determined to have someone punch Bruce in his face for me but in the end it’s not really Tim’s way to react with such violence so sadly I think I might have to do it myself.
> 
> There are references to Batman Legends of the Dark Knight; Issue Number 100, which to me, has the most devastating portrayal of how Bruce reacted to Jason’s death. I love to die. 
> 
> The title comes from Sonnet II by Edna St. Vincent Millay, that is my headcanon poem to how Bruce reacts to all of his pain, especially to Jason’s death.  
> Times does not bring relief; you all have lied  
> Who told me time would ease me of my pain!


End file.
